The days of Kurdish autonomy in Syria might be numbered following a series of failed ceasefires and a government sweep across the country’s northeast that is seen as key to securing the future of a centralized Syrian state.
Syrian forces encircled Kurdish-majority towns in the region this week and issued an ultimatum to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF): Join the central state by Saturday or face a wider war.
The consolidation of power also left the rights of Syrian minorities such as the Kurds in question.
Why We Wrote This
After a lightning military advance in Kurdish-held northeastern Syria, Damascus is demanding that the Kurdish-led SDF, a key U.S. ally in the fight against ISIS, agree to integrate into the national army. The United States has thrown its support behind a unified Syria.
Government forces recaptured the territory in the northeast – nearly two-thirds of SDF territory – at breakneck speed. But what was striking was not just a change in the balance of power on the ground in Syria, but a dramatic shift in faraway Washington.
For years, the United States relied on the SDF to combat the Islamic State and detain thousands of jihadists. But the Trump administration has turned its back on the Kurdish force, observers and officials say, pivoting support to the central government in Damascus under rebel-turned-president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“The Kurds were America’s partners, helped them to defeat ISIS, held up as a most successful alliance with the U.S. military, and all of a sudden they say we have a new partner and you are on your own,” says Mutlu Civiroglu, a U.S.-based analyst of Syria-Kurdish affairs. “And the Kurds are being left in a hostile environment.”
Autonomy vs. central state
Since the December 2024 fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad, the core of the dispute between the interim government in Damascus and the Kurds is the question of autonomy. The SDF and Kurdish forces favored greater autonomy in a semi-federal arrangement, similar to what exists in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mr. al-Sharaa’s government is pushing for a unified central state, and now has the Trump administration’s backing.
U.S. Middle East envoy Tom Barrack, who brokered a failed ceasefire between Damascus and the Kurds last weekend, then continued mediating between the two sides throughout this week, laid out Washington’s new position.
“The greatest opportunity for the Kurds in Syria right now lies in the post-Assad transition under the new government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa,” Mr. Barrack wrote in a statement. “This shifts the rationale for the U.S.-SDF partnership: The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps.”
“Today, the situation has fundamentally changed,” the statement continued. “Syria now has an acknowledged central government that has joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS … signaling a westward pivot.” Mr. Barrack urged the Kurds to join the government and advance “the integration process.”
A U.S. diplomatic source – who, like other diplomats in this story, requested anonymity to discuss sensitive issues – described the events as the “Syrian state reasserting itself.” The diplomat said that the Trump administration sees a long-term unified Syrian state as a key to stabilizing the region and facilitating a Syria-Israel peace process.
“The SDF wanted to maintain full autonomy, but in the end, they had to integrate – either through negotiations or through pressure,” the source added.
Territorial sweep
What began as skirmishes this month between the Damascus government and the SDF in northern Aleppo quickly spread to predominantly Arab regions under Kurdish control in the northeast. Local populations and Arab components of the SDF switched sides and backed the government advance.
The switching of allegiances by the Kurds’ Arab partners, who held senior positions in the SDF administration, reportedly “blindsided” Kurdish officials.
Government forces captured vast swaths of resource-rich territory that the Kurds had hoped to retain as an autonomous region that included Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour. The bulk of Syria’s estimated reserves of 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 8.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie in its northeast and were under Kurdish control until this week.
Under a new ceasefire agreement on Tuesday, Damascus gave Kurdish forces a four-day deadline to finalize an agreement to integrate its army and civilian institutions into the Syrian state.
As per the agreement, the state-run Syrian News Agency said, Damascus called on Kurdish forces to propose a candidate from the SDF for the position of deputy defense minister. It also reportedly requested a candidate for governor of Hassakeh, names for parliamentary representation, and a list of individuals for employment within Syrian state institutions.
“Integration” or absorption?
If a deal is reached, the Syrian government vowed to allow Kurdish forces to administer Kurdish-majority cities such as Hassakeh and Qamishli, but under the umbrella of the Syrian state. Damascus reportedly rejected an SDF request to retain command over merged Kurdish-Syrian army units.
In a series of statements on Thursday and Friday, the SDF said government forces continued to shell its positions, in violation of the ceasefire.
“The ‘integration’ being offered is absorption, it is not integration anymore, and no one is happy with that,” says Mr. Civiroglu, the U.S.-based analyst.
“The interim government and Syria’s Kurds have two distinct visions; different political, cultural, social and economic visions. The Kurds believe in multicultural coexistence and gender equality; the interim government under Ahmed al-Sharaa has shown it wants to impose a predominately Sunni Muslim vision where women have a decreased role.”
Some Kurds fear that government-aligned tribal Arab militias would massacre Kurdish civilians – similar to how Damascus-aligned Arab militias assaulted Syrian Alawite and Druze communities last year.
Yet, in a step billed as a goodwill gesture this week, Mr. al-Sharaa issued a presidential decree recognizing Kurdish as an official language in Syria for the first time. The decree also restored Syrian citizenship to Kurds who’d had theirs stripped by the Assad regime.
Pointing to a lack of widespread violence, one U.S. diplomat described this week as a “major test for Sharaa. So far, he has passed.”
Yet one Arab diplomat, an ally of the U.S. in frequent talks with Damascus and the Kurds, voiced concern: The U.S. pivot “gives allies in the region pause: If the U.S. can drop the Kurds so quickly, what about the rest of us?”
Containing ISIS
Though Damascus has joined the anti-ISIS coalition, Western policymakers and Arab allies question whether it can secure the thousands of ISIS detainees that the SDF has effectively held for nearly a decade since it defeated the transnational terrorist movement.
Acting on these concerns on Thursday, the U.S. military and allies began transferring 7,000 ISIS prisoners from detention centers in northeastern Syria to Iraq, reportedly at Baghdad’s request.
In a statement on Friday, the SDF noted that, with the support of the U.S.-led coalition, it had relocated its fighters assigned to securing ISIS prisons to “safe locations.”
During fighting this week, the Al-Hol detention camp – home to several thousand wives and teenaged children of ISIS fighters – was briefly left unattended as Kurdish forces withdrew.
Multiple prison breaks reportedly occurred during the week. Reuters quoted a U.S. official as saying some 200 ISIS prisoners had escaped. Syrian forces say they recaptured 80 of the jihadists.
